Geocaching

[siercia]

So, scirocco and I tried to go geocaching yesterday. It was, well, fun, but non-fruitful. We stuck close to home for our first foray out, since there are two caches within a half mile of our house, in Great Esker Park. Because of where they're placed, and my loathing of the ReallyBigHills^TM we decided to drive to the base of the hill and go from there. This would (theoretically) allow us non-hill access to both caches. We'll leave out the part where Wiley didn't test out the two notation forms I had gotten for the data, and I didn't have the only form his GPS will take, and we had to haul all the way home to get the proper notation.

We get back, programmed GPS in hand. Really, for both of these caches, we barely even needed the GPS, since we've hiked these trails a bunch of times. We get to site number one (Graham's Cache), and can't find it anywhere. Now, Wiley's GPS doesn't go to four decimal places, so it's less exact than it could be. Still, I wouldn't have expected that finding a tupperware container would have been so difficult. But we bushwhacked around and around, and couldn't find it. Finally concluded (mistakenly, we now think) that the cache was somewhere we couldn't access at high tide, and decided to come back next week for it.

So, next we headed over the cache number two (Osprey Pole Cache). We could see the major location marker for this cache (that being the Osprey Pole), but I was skeptical we'd be able to reach it, since it was high tide, and getting there requires crossing high water when the tide is anything but out. If I'd wanted to brave the ReallyBigHill^TM, we could have approached it that way, but it was getting late in the day, and I was already pretty tired. So we hiked out over the lowland route to see if we could get accross, but found the water too high for my comfort level. Feet would have gotten soaked, even in good waterproof boots, and it's very slippery, we couldn't see our footing, and the water had quite a current to it. Had we been by ourselves, I probably would hve tried it, but I didn't want to risk Wiley going over while he had the baby on his back in the pack.

So, we turned around and headed home, cacheless and disappointed. But when we got home, I looked at the hint and the pictures for the first cache, and Wiley's pretty sure he walked right past it, based on the pictures. So, next weekend, we head out at LOW tide, and try to find them again. Then on to the one in Hull, since the World's End cache seems to have been removed.

OH! And I got the best bonuus ever trying to find the first cache. A very cool small piece of driftwood that I brought home to be a little mantlepiece sculpture! I would never have found this just walking the trails, as it was pretty far off the trail in some marsh grass. So, in the end, it was all worth it. Of course, the new green-head bites I got weren't.

Comments

[asmodel.livejournal.com]

It sounds like you're getting a tremendous amount of exercise, which has got to be good. I miss doing all my walking and riding. Must do it again when I get to a country where it's summer, and light beyond business hours.

[siercia]

I'm getting a fair amount. I keep comparing myself to the people I know who are real athletes, and feeling like I'm not doing much, but I'm so out of shape that if I tried to keep up with them I'd probably die of a heart attack. So, yes, I am, even if it doesn't feel like much, or enough.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Hooray for Geocaching! Was there a lot of tree cover? Sometimes tree cover makes the GPS wonky and the readings aren't as accurate as you'd like them to be. OR, I swear sometimes people put their heads up their butts when they mark their coordinates. :)

I hope you find one next week. It's 3000000 times more fun when you find things! :) Don't forget to bring little junky things to swap for the contents!

[siercia]

We had even remembered to bring stuff to swap, too! Oh well, maybe next week will be better.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

I will cross my fingers for you. :)

[kungfoogirl.livejournal.com]

We geocached too!!

It was lots of fun.

Allen (awl) wrote haikus about it.

I wish I could have gone with you and Wiley and widget too! I bet y'all are a hoot to go geocaching with.

I'm glad you had some fun.